Hospital operator HCA Healthcare said on Friday its first-quarter profit rose nearly 9%, as more people underwent elective procedures and sought medical care due to a rise in flu cases.
The company reiterated its annual profit forecast and said it includes the impact of the two major hurricanes that hit its facilities last year, and policy developments, including the Trump admnistration's tariffs on imports.
Hospitals have been benefiting from elevated demand for non-urgent procedures, particularly from older Americans, since the second half of 2023.
Health insurance bellwether UnitedHealth Group last week flagged a surge in demand for medical care and lowered its annual outlook, a sign that the trend could continue into this year.
HCA earned a profit of $6.45 per share in the first quarter, compared with $5.93 a year earlier. It expects 2025 profit in the range of $24.05 to $25.85 per share.
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc.(Nasdaq: IRWD), a biotechnology company developing and commercializing life-changing therapies for people living with gastrointestinal (GI) and rare diseases, today announced it reiterates its full year 2025 LINZESS U.S. net sales and total Ironwood revenue guidance and raises its adjusted EBITDA guidance. Ironwood plans to report full first quarter 2025 results in early May.
“Today, we are reiterating our full-year 2025 LINZESS U.S. net sales and total Ironwood revenue guidance. In the first quarter of 2025, we saw continued strong prescription demand growth of 8% year-over-year, which was offset by anticipated pricing headwinds as well as a change in estimate of AbbVie gross-to-net rebate reserves, which was refined to reflect rebates owed for units dispensed in the first quarter of 2025. We do not expect first quarter LINZESS U.S. net sales results or this change in estimate to impact the full-year results,” said Tom McCourt, chief executive officer of Ironwood. “In addition, we have raised our full-year 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance to greater than $105 million as we no longer plan to make certain apraglutide commercial launch planning investments and will shift our focus to the confirmatory Phase 3 trial, consistent with the recent FDA feedback.”
Continued Strong Demand for U.S. LINZESS
Prescription Demand: Total LINZESS prescription demand in the first quarter of 2025 was 53 million LINZESS capsules, an 8% increase compared to the first quarter of 2024, per IQVIA.
U.S. Brand Collaboration: LINZESS U.S. net sales are provided to Ironwood by its U.S. partner, AbbVie Inc. (“AbbVie”). LINZESS U.S. net sales were $138.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, a 46% decrease compared to $256.6 million in the first quarter of 2024. Ironwood and AbbVie share equally in U.S. brand collaboration profits.
Q1 2025 LINZESS U.S. net sales reflects a change in AbbVie’s estimate of gross-to-net rebate reserves, which is expected to impact the quarterly phasing of LINZESS U.S. net sales but not the full-year results. This change in estimate is based on expected rebates owed for units dispensed by channel in each quarter, which negatively impacted Q1 2025 net sales. Moving forward, gross-to-net rebate reserves will continue to be based on rebates owed for units dispensed by channel in each applicable quarter. Based on historical trends, Ironwood expects rebates owed for units dispensed in subsequent quarters to offset the Q1 2025 change in estimate impact and expects no impact for the full year.
As a reminder, based on information provided by AbbVie, in Q1 2024, Ironwood recorded a $30 million reduction to collaborative arrangements revenue in its first quarter 2024 financial statements because of a LINZESS gross-to-net change in estimate related to the year ended December 31, 2023.
Ironwood 2025 Financial Guidance. Ironwood is reiterating its 2025 U.S. LINZESS net sales and total revenue guidance and is raising its adjusted EBITDA financial guidance.
Prior 2025 Guidance (February 2025)
Updated 2025 Guidance (April 2025)
U.S. LINZESS Net Sales
$800 - $850 million
High single digit prescription demand growth, more than offset by expected price erosion due to Medicare Part D redesign
$800 - $850 million
High single digit prescription demand growth, more than offset by expected price erosion due to Medicare Part D redesign
Total Revenue1
$260 - $290 million
$260 - $290 million
Adjusted EBITDA2
>$85 million
>$105 million
1 Ironwood’s U.S. collaborative arrangements revenue includes reimbursement from AbbVie for a portion of Ironwood’s commercial expenses related to sales of LINZESS in the U.S. The FY2025 total revenue guidance accounts for the impact of the reduction to Ironwood’s commercial expenses and corresponding reimbursement from AbbVie due to Ironwood’s strategic reorganization announced in January 2025.
2 Adjusted EBITDA is calculated by subtracting restructuring expenses, net interest expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization and stock-based compensation, from GAAP net income. The exclusion of stock-based compensation from Adjusted EBITDA represents an update to our definition of Adjusted EBITDA, effective in the first quarter of 2025. For purposes of this guidance, we have assumed that Ironwood will not incur material expenses related to business development activities in 2025. Ironwood does not provide guidance on GAAP net income or a reconciliation of expected adjusted EBITDA to expected GAAP net income because, without unreasonable efforts, it is unable to predict with reasonable certainty the non-GAAP adjustments used to calculate adjusted EBITDA. These adjustments are uncertain, depend on various factors and could have a material impact on GAAP net income for the guidance period. Management believes this non-GAAP information is useful for investors, taken in conjunction with Ironwood’s GAAP financial statements, because it provides greater transparency and period-over-period comparability with respect to Ironwood’s operating performance. These measures are also used by management to assess the performance of the business. Investors should consider these non-GAAP measures only as a supplement to, not as a substitute for or as superior to, measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. In addition, these non-GAAP financial measures are unlikely to be comparable with non-GAAP information provided by other companies.
Since December, when the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, Syria has witnessed a chilling wave of mysterious kidnappings of young women, predominantly from the Alawite community.
Evidence continues to emerge that these women, primarily from the Alawite religious sect, have been abducted and taken to live as sex slaves in Idlib governorate, the traditional HTS stronghold, by armed factions affiliated with the new Syrian government.
Shockingly, the mass kidnapping and enslavement of Alawite women now being carried out by HTS-affiliated factions mirrors the enslavement of the thousands of Yezidi women by ISIS during the 2014 genocide in Sinjar, Iraq.
The activist who spoke out
In a now deleted Facebook post, Hiba Ezzedeen, a Syrian activist from Idlib, described her encounter with a woman she believes was captured and taken to the governorate as a sex slave during the wave of massacres carried out by government-affiliated factions and security forces against Alawites in the country's coastal areas on March 7.
“During my last visit to Idlib, I was at a place with my brother when I saw a man I knew with a woman I had never met before,” Hiba explained.
“This man had been married multiple times before and is believed to currently have three wives. What caught my attention was the woman’s appearance – specifically, it was clear she didn’t know how to wear a hijab properly, and her scarf was draped haphazardly.”
After inquiring further, Ezzedeen learned that the woman was from the coastal areas where the March 7 massacres, in which over 1,600 Alawite civilians were killed, took place. “This man had brought her to the village and married her, with no further details available. No one knew what had happened to her or how she got there, and naturally, the young woman was too afraid to speak,” Ezzedeen added.
Because the situation was so strange and alarming to her, she began asking everyone she knew, “rebels, factions, human rights activists,” about the abduction of Alawite women from the coast. “Unfortunately, many confirmed that this had indeed happened, and not just by one faction. Based on what friends said, accusations point to factions of the National Army and some foreign fighters, with varying motives,” she reported.
Syria's new HTS-led security forces have incorporated armed extremist groups, including Uyghurs from the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) and Syrian Turkmen from factions of the Turkish-intelligence-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), into their ranks since coming to power in Damascus.
Various SNA commanders and foreign extremists have been appointed to top positions in the Syrian Ministry of Defense.
While the HTS-dominated General Security units participated in the March 7 massacres in many areas, former SNA and foreign fighter factions are believed to have led the campaign. Militants went door to door in Alawite villages and neighborhoods, executing all military-aged men they could find, looting homes, and at times killing women, children, and the elderly.
Ezzedeen concluded her post by stating, “This is a serious issue that cannot be ignored. The government must immediately reveal the fate of these women and release them.”
Rather than investigate the issue and seek to rescue the captive women, the HTS-appointed governor of Idlib issuedan order for Ezzedeen's arrest, claiming she had “insulted the hijab.”
Ezzedeen's courageous revelation shed light on the fate of many young women from minority communities who had mysteriously disappeared in recent months, after self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and HTS toppled Assad and took power in Damascus.
A pattern of abductions
In one of the earliest cases, a young Druze woman from the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, Karolis Nahlah, disappeared on the morning of February 2, 2024, while on her way to university in the Mezzeh area. The case was strange because no ransom was demanded, and nothing was heard of her again.
Over time, information began to trickle out that young women like Karolis were being kidnapped and taken to Idlib as slaves, as Hiba Ezzedeen finally confirmed.
Above: Screenshot of a Facebook post inquiring about the whereabouts of the missing Karolis Nahla. The caption reads: “Karolis Nahla has been missing since yesterday. She is a second year university student studying French Literature. She had class at 9:00 am. At 12:00 pm we lost contact with her. Please, if anybody knows anything about her or has seen her, inform us.”
On March 21, Bushra Yassin Mufarraj, an Alawite mother of two, went missing from the bus station in Jableh. Her husband later posted a video appeal stating she had been abducted and taken to Idlib. “My wife was taken captive in Idlib. Is there anything more cruel that could happen to a man in the world? That his wife and the mother of his children be in such circumstances,” he stated in a video appeal for help published on social media 10 days later.
Bushra's disappearance was followed by a wave of kidnappings in the following days and weeks. The Kurdish Jinha Agency reported on 25 March, citing local reports, that more than 100 people were kidnapped by armed groups in Syria’s coastal regions over the previous 48 hours, including many women.
On April 5, 21-year-old Katia Jihad Qarqat went missing. The last contact with her was at 9:20 am near a shop at the Bahra circle in Jdeidat Artouz in the Damascus countryside. Her family pleaded that anyone who had seen or had any information about her should contact them.
Above: A screenshot of a social media post inquiring about the whereabouts of the missing Katia Jihad Qarqat. The caption reads: "A girl has gone missing in the Damascus countryside. The young woman, Katia, was last seen yesterday Friday, at 9:20 AM near a shop at the Bahra circle in Jdeidat Artouz. She is from the village of Hina and is a third-year university student. Anyone who has seen her or has any information is kindly asked to contact the following number 0994479206."
On April 8, 17-year-old Sima Suleiman Hasno went missing at 11:00 am after leaving her school in the village of Qardaha in the Latakia countryside. Sima was released four days later in Damascus, where she was handed over to her aunt by members of the HTS-led Syrian government. Surveillance footage from shops near the abduction site circulated widely on social media, sparking widespread outrage.
On April 11, at 4:00 pm, contact was lost with 22-year-old Raneem Ghazi Zarifa in the Hama countryside, in the city of Masyaf. “We are extremely worried about her. We ask that anyone with information about her, no matter how small, please contact us immediately,” her family said in a social media post.
On April 14, Batoul Arif Hassan, a young married woman with a three-year-old child from Safita, disappeared after visiting family in the village of Bahouzi. Contact was lost with her around 4:00 pm as she was traveling in a public minibus on the Homs–Safita Road. Her family asked in a social media post for anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact her brother by phone.
A photo of the kidnapped 26-year-old Nour Kamal Khodr.
On the morning of April 16, Aya Talal Qassem, 23, was kidnapped after leaving her home in the coastal city of Tartous. Three days later, Aya's kidnapper freed her and sent her to Tartous on the Homs highway, only for the HTS-led General Prosecution Service to detain her.
Aya's mother posted a video to social media explaining that her family was not allowed to be with her in detention and that her father was arrested when he insisted on seeing her. The mother said that the General Prosecution Service tried to force Aya to give testimony, saying that she was not kidnapped but had instead run away with a lover. The mother added that she was pressured to tell such a story despite the presence of bleeding cuts and wounds on her body.
A video was posted online of the moment of her emotional return home to eagerly awaiting family and relatives. On April 21, 26-year-old Nour Kamal Khodr was abducted with her two daughters, 5-year-old Naya Maher Qaidban and 3-year-old Masa Maher Qaidban.
Nour and her daughters left their home in the village of Al-Mashrafa in rural Homs at noon, heading toward a neighbor’s house. Witnesses saw a masked group affiliated with the HTS-led General Security abduct them, placing them in a vehicle marked with the group’s emblem before fleeing.
Echoes of Sinjar
By April 17, Iraqi media outlet Al-Daraj reported on ten confirmed kidnappings of Alawite women from the coastal regions. According to one survivor, pseudonym Rahab, she was abducted in broad daylight and held in a locked room with another woman.
One woman who spoke to Al-Daraj under the pseudonym Rahab was released after the kidnappers allegedly feared a raid by General Security. She said she was kidnapped in broad daylight and held in a room with another woman, stating:
“They tortured and beat us. We weren't allowed to speak to each other, but I heard the kidnappers' accents. One had a foreign accent and the other a local Idlib accent. I knew this because they were cursing us because we were Alawites.”
The other woman, held with her, pseudonym Basma, remains in captivity. She was forced to call her family to tell them she was “fine” and to assure them that “they should not publish anything” about her abduction.
Al-Daraj also documented the case of an 18-year-old girl who was also kidnapped in broad daylight, from the countryside of a coastal city in Syria. Her family later received a text message warning them to remain silent about her abduction or else she would be sent back dead. The girl later sent the family a voice recording from a phone number registered in the Ivory Coast, saying she was fine and unsure where she had been taken.
A photo of Nour Kamal Khodr's daughters: Naya Maher Qaidban, 5 years old Masa Maher Qaidban, 3 years old.
The Iraqi media outlet compared these cases to the ISIS genocide of Yezidis in Sinjar. Over 6,400 Yezidis were enslaved by ISIS in 2014. Thousands were trafficked into Syria and Turkiye, sold as domestic or sex slaves, or trained for battle. Many remain missing.
HTS: The ideological continuity of ISIS
That Alawite women are now appearing in Idlib is unsurprising given HTS’s ideological lineage. HTS, which seized Idlib in 2015 with CIA-supplied TOW missiles, shares the same genocidal worldview as ISIS. It was founded by ISIS and led by Sharaa – then known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who was dispatched to Syria in 2011 by the late “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to establish the Nusra Front, forerunner to HTS.
In 2014, Syria analyst Sam Heller therefore described Nusra’s clerics as promoting “toxic – even genocidal – sectarianism," towards Alawites, based on the teachings of the medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah.
Though HTS and ISIS clashed in 2014, their ties endured. When Baghdadi was killed in 2019, he was hiding in Barisha, just outside HTS-held Sarmada. At the time, numerous enslaved Yezidis were also in Idlib.
The Guardianconfirmed this, quoting Abdullah Shrem, a Yezidi rescuer, and Alexander Hug of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), who said missing persons were often held “in areas beyond government control.”
In 2019, Ali Hussein, a Yezidi from Dohuk, toldNPR journalist Jane Arraf of his attempt to purchase the freedom of an 11-year-old Yezidi girl who had been abducted by ISIS but was “sold to an emir of an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria – Jabhat al-Nusra [Nusra Front] – [and] that she's no longer a virgin.”
“I told you $45,000 from the beginning. I know what they pay in Raqqa. I told you, in Turkiye, they would pay $60,000 or $70,000 and take out the girl's organs. But I don't want to do that,” the ISIS contact threatened during the negotiation.
Reuters reported the rescue of a young Yezidi boy, Rojin, who had been captured and enslaved by ISIS along with his brother in 2014. At 13 years old, Rojin was taken to the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp in eastern Syria. He was held there alongside thousands of ISIS families and supporters after the organization's final defeat in the Syrian border town of Baghouz in 2019.
The Saudi ISIS fighter who had purchased Rojin then arranged for him to be smuggled from Al-Hol to Idlib. He was freed five years later, in November 2024, as HTS was preparing its lightning assault on Aleppo.
Reuters reported that in another case, a 21-year-old Yezidi named Adnan Zandenan received a Facebook message from a younger brother he presumed was dead, but who also had been trafficked to Idlib.
“My hands were trembling. I thought one of my friends was messing with me,” Zandenan recalled. However, Zandenan's euphoria quickly turned to despair when his brother, now 18 years old and thoroughly brainwashed by extremist Salafi ideology, refused to leave Idlib and return to the Yezidi community in Sinjar.
The repackaged caliphate
In December 2024, just one day after Julani's HTS entered Damascus to topple Assad, Rudaw reported that a 29-year-old Yezidi woman had been rescued from slavery in Idlib. The Iraqi Kurdish outlet stated that many Yezidi women have been rescued from the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp.
However, others “have been found in areas of Syria controlled by rebels [HTS] or Turkish-backed armed groups [SNA], and some have been located in third countries,” it added.
In the days following Assad’s fall, jubilant crowds took to city squares, chanting in support of Julani, now rebranded as Ahmad al-Sharaa. Yet as western diplomats scrambled to meet the new ruler, the meaning of his “freedom” quickly became clear. The abductions of Alawite women – mirroring the Yezidi tragedy –signaled that Julani had simply repackaged the ISIS model.
Under the guise of liberation, a brutal system of sectarian violence, enslavement, and rape was unleashed upon those now under his rule. In response to growing denial, genocide expert Matthew Barber warned of the same pattern that surrounded the initial days of the Yezidi genocide: disbelief, dismissal, and derision – until the truth proved far worse.
“No one believed it could be happening … Even Western analysts and journalists did not believe our claims,” Barber said. “The reality was even worse than what we were claiming.”
The victims’ silence is not voluntary – it is coerced. And as this campaign of gendered terror continues, the question remains: How long will the world avert its gaze?
President Donald Trump asserted on Thursday that trade talks between the U.S. and China are underway, pushing back against Chinese claims that no discussions have taken place to ease the ongoing trade war.
"They had a meeting this morning," Trump told reporters, declining to say to whom he was referring. "It doesn't matter who 'they' is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we've been meeting with China."
China on Thursday said it had not held trade talks with Washington despite repeated comments from the U.S. government suggesting there had been engagement.
"China and the United States have not conducted consultations or negotiations on tariffs, let alone reached an agreement," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters at a news briefing, calling reports of such information "false news."
The conflicting statements from Washington and Beijing underscore the strained communication and uncertainty defining the current trade war, adding volatility to global markets and prolonging economic pain on both sides.
American businesses face soaring import costs while Chinese exporters are squeezed by falling U.S. demand.
Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week indicated there might be an easing in tensions with China.
On Wednesday, Bessent said excessively high tariffs between the U.S. and China will have to come down before trade negotiations can proceed and that de-escalation was necessary for the world's two largest economies to rebalance their trading relationship.
The White House earlier this month imposed 145% tariffs on Chinese goods, prompting Beijing to respond with duties of its own and increased restrictions on critical minerals exports to the United States.
Republicans in the U.S. Congress plan to introduce a sweeping $150 billion defense package that will give an initial $27 billion boost to President Donald Trump's controversial Golden Dome missile defense shield, according to a document and a congressional aide.
The measure, which will be in addition to the approved $886 billion national security budget for 2025, would also fund the building of 14 warships and lift homeland security spending. It will be part of Trump's sweeping tax cuts bill, which will cut taxes by about $5 trillion and add approximately $5.7 trillion to the federal government's debt over the next decade.
The measure, details of which have not been previously reported, was designed to address the military's most pressing needs, Republican Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters in an interview.
He said it was focused on supercharging key areas such as naval shipbuilding, missile defense, and space sensing as well as strengthening the country's military presence, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, part of a broader strategy to prevent conflict.
"Strength, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, will make China less eager to break the status quo, which has led to a vast global prosperity among people who've never had it before. This is part of a plan to prevent war," Wicker said.
Republican leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees hammered out the legislation that will be unveiled as soon as Friday evening.
The $27 billion investment in Golden Dome will fund the building of more missile interceptors and the purchase of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) antiballistic missile batteries, according to the congressional aide. THAAD is made by Lockheed Martin.
Elon Musk's SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of the Golden Dome program that would track incoming missiles, Reuters reported last week.
Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement the bill would be moved through the House Armed Services Committee next week and he wanted it to get to the president's desk as soon as possible.
"We're revitalizing our defense industrial base, strengthening our ability to deter adversaries like China, and giving our servicemembers the support they deserve." the statement said.
The congressional aide said the two Republican Chairmen were in lockstep with Trump on the spending priorities set forth in the package.
According to the document seen by Reuters, the bill's largest item is $29 billion for the procurement of 14 new ships, and what it called a "historic largest-ever" investment in unmanned ships.
As part of an $11 billion expansion of combat aircraft purchases, the bill also funds the purchase of about 40 Boeing Co F-15EX fighter jets, the congressional aide said.
Some $20 billion in funding has been allotted for the production of new munitions, the expansion of the country's supplier base and the replenishment of critical minerals stockpiles.
The spending package includes $14 billion to fund the adoption of artificial intelligence and to expand the production of new low-cost weapons. The industrial scale of the war in Ukraine has highlighted the necessity for deeper inventories of relatively inexpensive weapons.
And in a push to deter China, the package earmarks $6 billion to weapons procurement priorities for the Pacific.
It also provides significant funding for the development of innovative technologies, including a $5 billion investment in autonomous systems, a substantial increase from the $500 million allocated by the Biden administration.
To help address the Pentagon's chronic audit failures, $700 million has been earmarked to accelerate the adoption of more automated systems Department of Defense business processes.
Notably, much of the funding allocated in this package will not expire at the end of the fiscal year, providing a significant boost to the country's defense capabilities.
The measure will move forward through the process of reconciliation, a parliamentary procedure that allows Congress to pass budget-related bills with a simple majority vote, bypassing the usual 60-vote threshold required for most legislation.
Policymakers on both sides of the political aisle increasingly advocate for affordable, reliable, and clean energy. This is for good reason – modern society requires energy that is affordable and available on demand. Environmental concerns are also very important. Together, affordability, reliability, and cleanliness form the three pillars of ideal energy policy.
Both analyses find natural gas is the most affordable, reliable, and clean electrical power source. Not far behind natural gas are nuclear, hydro, and coal. Lagging at the bottom of the affordability scorecard are wind and solar power.
Natural gas is easily the lowest-cost electrical power source, with coal the second-most affordable. Natural gas also scores very high for reliable high-volume power production, as do nuclear and coal.
Despite some claims that wind and solar are less expensive than conventional power, the opposite is true. Wind and solar benefit from far more subsidies than other power sources, which merely shift their high costs to taxpayers rather than directly to customers’ electricity bills. Also, the intermittent and often unpredictable nature of wind and solar power impose substantial costs on the grid, requiring other power sources to frequently ramp up and down – quite inefficiently – to cover for the variability of wind and solar. Finally, wind turbines and solar panels must often be built far from population centers, requiring extensive and expensive networks of transmission wires to deliver power to customers.
Taking all the above factors into account, a peer-reviewed analysis of full-system levelized costs of competing power sources shows wind power is seven times more expensive than natural gas power and solar power is 10 times more expensive. That explains why most of the world – and nearly all the developing world – is building natural gas, coal, and nuclear power plants rather than wind and solar power facilities.
Perhaps the most noteworthy findings of the two independent analyses are the poor environmental performance of wind and solar power. Wind and solar, like hydro and nuclear, are emissions-free. However, wind and solar score quite poorly regarding many other important environmental factors. Wind and solar require disrupting and developing far more land and ecosystems than other power sources. Wind and solar generation directly kill far more animals than other power sources, including many protected and endangered species. The mining of toxic and rare earth minerals for wind turbines and solar panels is enormously and uniquely harmful to water and soil health.
Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order noting the affordability and abundance of coal and removing obstacles to coal production and utilization. The two new analyses support the Trump administration’s energy policies, which emphasizes increased domestic production of oil, natural gas, and coal. At the same time, the two analyses support similar action to remove obstacles to nuclear power, hydro power, and – especially – natural gas.
Don’t expect the big utilities to necessarily support natural gas and other affordable, reliable, and clean power sources. Utilities typically operate under a government-protected monopoly such that they don’t need to produce affordable power to gain an edge over competitors. Also, governments typically guarantee utilities approximately 10% profit on so-called green power projects and expenditures. As a result, utilities typically lobby for the most expensive power sources to boost their total profit.
For consumers and grid integrity, however, natural gas is the gold standard for affordable, reliable, and clean electricity generation. Nuclear, hydro, and coal are not too far behind.
Having worn out the use of 'Hitler' over the last decade, the liberal media is searching for its next sensationalist descriptor for an otherwise innocuous "injustice" deserving of unlimited taxpayer dollars.
This go-round, the media is replacing their loaded "food desert" term with "food apartheid". Because, hey, when there isn't a World War II or full blown civil rights style crisis on the media's hands to all them to argue their ideologies...why not just invent one?
"The Associated Press periodically tweaks its style guide—often to make its left‑wing activism more subtle. Progressive activists do the same, inventing controversies out of thin air. Where we once spoke of “food deserts,” the Radical Left now insists on “food apartheid”—and expects us to pretend this contrived concept is happening in Seattle," Jason Rantz of 770 KTTH argues.
Rantz points out in an article out this morning that Seattle Times columnist Naomi Ishisaka pushes the idea that racism is behind the lack of quality grocery stores in areas like south Seattle compared to whiter neighborhoods.
“While ‘food desert’ might lead people to think there’s something inevitable... ‘food apartheid’ argues that these inequities are the result of intentional choices, and can be changed,” she writes.
True to her unwavering BLM alignment, Ishisaka sees racism in every disparity. Fewer stores in Black neighborhoods? “These inequities... contribute to health disparities that fall along racial and socio-economic lines,” she claims—suggesting a broad, selective conspiracy that oddly excludes Asians and poor whites.
Naomi Ishisaka blames “policies such as redlining and urban renewal” for underinvestment in Black neighborhoods—but sidesteps the more obvious factor: crime.
She even concedes that near her Rainier Beach home, “we have two Safeways, the closest of which has been the site of numerous incidents of gun violence,” unwittingly highlighting the real deterrent.
Grocery stores operate on thin margins and avoid areas where safety is a liability. That basic economic reality seems lost on Ishisaka, blinded by ideology.
The irony is rich: the same activists crying “food apartheid” also chant “ACAB,” oppose policing, and undermine public safety—then wonder why businesses won’t invest, Rantz says.
